Page 51 of The Triangle

“Apparently we’re here,” Danny growls, breaking that last lingering thread of recollection. “Wherever the fuck that is.” He’s holding his phone out the window. Trying to get a GPS signal, I think.

That makes me smile as I sit up and swipe the hanging strands of hair out of my eyes. It throws me into the past and brings me into the present all in the same moment. GPS coordinates were always his security blanket. He has a thing for maps too. When I was a kid I always got him something map-related for his birthday. A little globe made of stone. Or an old book of maps from a garage sale. Once I even got him a button-down shirt with maps all over it.

I laugh, mostly to myself. Because he even wore that ugly thing.

“What’s funny back there?” Danny rumbles.

“Nothing,” I say, scooting over to the window to see where we are.

It’s a forest. A very thick forest. And the road we’re traveling on is not a road. It’s almost not even a path. It’s sorta cleared or we wouldn’t be able to get through the thick undergrowth on either side of the massive trees that are so close to the car, I think this Range Rover’s paint job is fucked, but there’s no dirt or gravel. It’s mostly ferns and leafy shrubs that smack up against the grille and drag along the undercarriage.

Danny was always trying to track me back then. Apps on my phone and check-in times. Like a father. Or a big brother. Which pissed me off because I’ve had a crush on Danny Fortnight since the moment I laid eyes on him and getting him to stop thinking of me as family was a constant battle I fought hard.

But it also felt protective in that other way too.

That way a man has of making a woman feel owned. Or claimed. A possessive way.

And I did like that feeling.

I liked it a lot.

“Here we are,” Alec says, pulling the car into a thicket of overhanging trees and turning off the engine.

Danny shoots him a look that requires no words.

“Trust me, bru. Come on.”

We get out, Alec shouldering the bag of guns, Danny still holding his stupid phone up trying to get his precious GPS signal, and walk into the trees. I hug the pea coat close to my body because there’s almost no sunlight in here. Even in the late morning sunshine. Just darkness that smells like wet earth, and too many plants, and maybe the hint of an approaching storm.

A few minutes later we step out of the woods and into a valley with a choppy lake surrounded by mountains. There’s a little bit of misty fog hanging low on the water, making the whole place feel a little surreal.

“Finally,” Danny says, mostly to himself.

I guess he got his signal.

“Through here,” Alec says. So we follow, end up on a path of smooth pea pebbles, and stand before a large metal door the color of rust.

Alec places his hand on some kind of reader built into the exterior concrete wall, blinks his eyes at a screen, and then there’s a flash, and a click, and the door opens just a crack.

“Well, that’s not creepy,” Danny says.

But it’s kinda not. I mean, this is Alec. He’s very black and white when it comes to security. Either there’s none at all or it’s one hundred percent sci-fi military-grade shit.

We’re just getting treatment number two right now and after what happened back at Danny’s garage, that’s OK with me.

We step through, but we don’t enter a house. It’s more of a… compound. We’re on the top of a hill and the lake is just barely visible over the roof of a house down below. Mountains flank us on all sides.

“Wow,” I say, the last through. I turn to close the door behind me, but it’s already closing on its own accord. “This is some setup.”

“Why the fuck is it here?” Danny asks.

Alec shoots him an annoyed look over his shoulder. Just like Danny’s earlier, it requires no words.

It’s here for us. Obviously.

If there’s one thing you can count on when you do business with Alec van den Berg it’s that he’s got a place for you to go when the job is done. And no, this isn’t quite the same. We’re not basking in the afterglow of a million-dollar robbery. But it’s close enough to that to feel normal.

There’s eleventy billion flat stone steps leading down to what ends up being the real front door to this place, and Alec repeats the security procedure.